History, doctrine, culture, books

Teaching the Old Testament: An Official Statement About Interpretation

The course of study for LDS Gospel Doctrine classes for 2018 is the Old Testament, which is a problem for some teachers because the manual has so many Mormon misreadings of Old Testament verses as well as adopted Christian misreadings of Old Testament verses. And if you are a teacher who follows any sort of ethics of teaching, you simply won't knowingly make false or misleading statements when you teach, or endorse a false or misleading interpretation of a text. One solution is to simply ignore the outdated manual and just do "read and discuss" lessons. But questions of interpretation will still come up. I have found a nice resource at LDS.org to enrich that discussion. Well, it's at the Mormon Newsroom, which is good enough: Reverence for the Bible, a short essay published in 2008. No author identified, of course.

Here is the first relevant passage in the essay, listing some interpretive approaches (emphasis added):

There is a broad range of approaches within the vast mosaic of biblical interpretation. For example, biblical inerrancy maintains that the Bible is without error and contradiction; biblical infallibility holds that the Bible is free from errors regarding faith and practice but not necessarily science or history; biblical literalism requires a literal interpretation of events and teachings in the Bible and generally discounts allegory and metaphor; and the “Bible as literature” educational approach extols the literary qualities of the Bible but disregards its miraculous elements.

That list of examples is not intended to be comprehensive. In particular, it fails to list historical criticism, the primary scholarly approach for interpreting or at least for contextualizing any particular biblical book or passage. But at least that quotation legitimizes a discussion about biblical interpretation, both that we all do it (there is no interpretation-free approach to reading and understanding scripture) and that there are various ways to do it.

Here is the second relevant passage from the essay:

The Church does not strictly subscribe to any of these interpretive approaches. Rather, in the words of Joseph Smith, it regards the Bible to be the word of God, “as far as it is translated correctly” (8th Article of Faith). Accordingly, Church members believe that during the centuries-long process in which fallible human beings compiled, translated and transcribed the Bible, various errors entered the text. However, this does not override the overwhelming predominance of truth within the Bible.

Of course, "translation" as used in a Mormon context does not mean "translation" the way everyone else in the 21st century uses that English term. Here, it means something more like transmitted, as is clear in the reference to "compiled, translated, and transcribed." In other LDS contexts, I sometimes have no idea what Mormon commentators mean when they use the word "translated."

In any case, saying that "the Church does not strictly subscribe to any of these interpretive approaches" really opens up the discussion. It becomes easier to say, "perhaps biblical literalism is not the interpretive method to apply to this verse." From a Bible as literature perspective, it becomes easier to talk about how Old Testament writers appropriated sources from other cultures and rewrote or modified them for an Israelite audience. So this seems like a great resource to introduce a five-minute discussion of biblical interpretation in an introductory LDS Old Testament lesson.

Comments

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In the world of "translated correctly," I guess the Bible now means whatever present authorities say it means. No sense trying to make sense out of the text, or relying on historical criticism methods. Or considering what the rest of the bible-reading world might think about particular content.

"which is a problem for some teachers because the manual has so many Mormon misreadings of Old Testament verses as well as adopted Christian misreadings of Old Testament verses."

I don't see the problem. What you call "misreadings" I call reinterpretations a la Nephi's "liken them" and modern revelations. Secondly, one could argue that the New Testament was a misreading of the Old Testament (an argument that has been made). Yet, for a Christian of faith such an idea dismisses the religious reasons for those "misreadings." Besides, such a criticism seems to argue against one kind of "literal ism" and replace it with another. After so many hundreds and thousands of years, and the belief that the Holy Ghost is the ultimate interpreter of the text, then the Bible is more reader response than historical theory. Its just that for Mormons and most other Christians, the ultimate authority of what interpretations are acceptable is more specific than simple individual believers.

Parley P. Pratt: The Apostle Paul of MormonismGivens and Grow's warts-and-all biography of this energetic missionary, author, and apostle whose LDS career spanned Joseph Smith's life, the emigration to Utah, and Brigham Young's early leadership of the Church in Utah. My Review